


Inclination

by quassia



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 14:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2273247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quassia/pseuds/quassia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Souda's only comfort after another harrowing, abnormal trial is cola. Cola and only cola. There shouldn't be anyone else at the store in the middle of the night, either. Naturally, he's wrong on both accounts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inclination

Comfort.

That’s what Souda’s looking for.

That’s why he’s out in the middle of the night (despite anticipating danger with every step he takes to the store) going to pick up something. He really needs it. He really does. He can’t think of anything else that might relax him at a time like this. He sags in relief once he gets inside of the store, looking around, uncomfortably avoiding staring at the place where the supplies Togami used had once been.

His eyes fall quickly on the big bottles of cola and he lights up with relief, making a beeline to one and crouching down in front of it. He gathers it into his arms and grips it tight, thankfully.

“Oi, what are you doing here?”

Souda screams (a variant on his usual “ugyaa”), someone else curses loudly, and the bottle of cola goes bouncing over the floor, fizzing up and effectively rendering itself useless to Souda.

Flat cola is the worst.

He whips around, his heart thundering in his chest, one of his hands feeling for a weapon on his person (nothing, naturally) and then he stops when he realises who he’s looking at. A small person in a neat suit, wearing a frown and an eyepatch, with something held in one of his hands.

“Kuzuryuu,” Souda splutters. “The hell are you doing here?!”

One of Kuzuryuu’s eyebrows twitch and he flails his free hand at Souda. “I asked you that first, idiot! And what were you thinking, screaming like that?! You trying to give someone a heart attack?!”

“You’re the one tryin’ to give people heart attacks!” Souda rages right back, incensed now, his heart still pounding violently in his chest. “Seriously… I thought it was someone come to kill me for sure…” Kuzuryuu opens his mouth as though to start something else—but then he stops, closes his lips, purses them slightly and exhales.

“Sorry,” he mumbles after a pregnant pause, a little gruff. Souda squints at him. “For surprising you.”

“I—it’s okay, I guess…” Faced with a sincere apology, any of Souda’s anger and indignation gently fizzles out and he’s left confused instead, looking at Kuzuryuu. “But what were you doin’ here?”

Kuzuryuu flushes and he moves the hand holding the bag behind his back. “Nothing.”

“Hah? What was that you just hid? Don’t tell me… a weapon?!”

“What?! Tch…” Kuzuryuu clucks his tongue in disapproval and Souda squirms, readying himself… but then he’s looking at the colourful labelling of the snack food shoved in front of his face.

“…what’s this?”

“Can’t you read?”

“’C-course I can read, but… you know…” A yakuza? Liking sweet foods? Actually, no, it’s not that strange. Souda raises his hand to scratch his cheek with a forefinger, his eyes narrowing. “Ah! I got it! You got the munchies, huh, Kuzuryuu?”

It isn’t the first time he’s seen a blush flare in Kuzuryuu’s cheeks… but it’s the first time he’s been the one to cause it. So Souda looks with a bit too much interest as he blushes and lowers the bag to his side, glaring at Souda with one eye. It’s more effective than it would be if he just had one, Souda thinks, ‘cause there’s something about an eyepatch. It just screams _I’ve seen some things, and I’ll mess you up if I have to_. But so would the suit. And Kuzuryuu’s talent. But anyway.

“And what about you? Came to smuggle off some soda to your cottage?” Kuzuryuu scoffs.

Souda’s blushing this time and looking back over his shoulder to the bottle that fell. He hesitantly wanders over to it and picks it up… but no good. Like he’d drink something flat like this! So he goes to grab a new bottle and as he enfolds it in his arms, he sniffs. “So what? You got a problem with it? No-one else has been drinkin’ it, and if I didn’t, it’d be a waste.”

Kuzuryuu just shakes his head at him, but Souda takes it for a victory and reaffirms his grip on the bottle before heading to the door…

…only to realise Kuzuryuu’s right behind him.

He looks back. “W—what?”

“I’m going back to the same place you are, moron,” Kuzuryuu reminds him, unimpressed. “So get moving.” He pushes his free hand against Souda’s back, between his shoulders, and Souda stumbles with surprise at such a sturdy push from a small arm as Kuzuryuu’s. He grouches something under his breath, but he does start to walk and tries not to fidget too much when Kuzuryuu doesn’t outpace him to leave him in the dust but falls into step with him. For what reason, Souda doesn’t know.

He spends a long minute or two alternating between glancing ahead and glancing over to Kuzuryuu until he meets one eye, a jolt shaking him as he realises Kuzuryuu’s looking back at him.

“What now?” Souda stammers.

Kuzuryuu turns his head away, looking forward with a frown on his lips. “No… well. I was just wondering why you were out this late. I mean, you could’ve just got that bottle tomorrow morning.” He pauses a moment. “You all right?”

The concern nearly blindsides Souda, and he stumbles with a curse before he catches himself, his heart pounding suddenly too hard in his chest. Why is this guy asking him if he’s all right? Obviously, he’s fine… Obviously… not. Who could be fine, after everything? Who could, after seeing so many people die? After the last trial, after Tanaka…

As much as he’d disliked the guy, as much as he’d burned with jealousy (why, why was it him? Why did people like him when he acted like a weirdo, when Souda had done so much to change himself? Why?), he…didn’t want to see that guy die. He didn’t want to see Sonia-san so sad. He didn’t want to have to take apart Nidai’s body and do what Komaeda wanted, he didn’t…

“I’m… fine.”

Kuzuryuu’s expression softens minutely, the line of his mouth, the slant of his eyebrows. “…liar. And a shitty liar, too.”

“Shut up,” Souda mutters.

“It’s all right.” Kuzuryuu reaches over to him, bringing his hand against the back of Souda’s shoulder. “It’s been hard. It’s fine not to be all right. Hell, I’m not fine still. Not since…”

 _Pekoyama died?_ Souda ends the unfinished sentence for him in his head.

“Anyway, what I’m saying is that… you know. You don’t gotta handle this by yourself. I’m around. If you need someone to talk to or something.” Kuzuryuu’s facing forward again, pointedly not looking over at Souda, and Souda swears that he’s blushing.

What’s with this guy? Being so nice…

Souda’s eyes are burning, and he’s thankful for the darkness of the night. When he was walking to the store, he’d been afraid, terrified, anticipating the worst at every turn… but now the darkness isn’t scary anymore. He can hear the waves. He can hear the crunch of footsteps that aren’t his own and he doesn’t feel as isolated anymore, doesn’t feel the way he had when he was locked up in his cottage.

He doesn’t answer Kuzuryuu and Kuzuryuu doesn’t say anything more as they walk together, turning down the path to lead into the hotel. Souda pauses, hesitates by the mailbox of his cottage and looks over as Kuzuryuu walks past, toward his own, that small back somehow looking very large from here, after the offer he’d made.

He’d changed.

“Hey…”

Kuzuryuu stops, looks back. “Yeah?”

“Can I… y’know.”

He gestures, unable to put voice to it, toward Kuzuryuu’s cottage. Kuzuryuu frowns in confusion, and then his eye widens.

“What’re you saying…?”

Souda bristles all at once, defensiveness quick to kick in and he pivots on a heel quickly. “Nothin’! Never mind, it’s nothin’, just a stupid… Anyway, go back!”

“Idiot,” Kuzuryuu groans and moves to grab at the back of his boiler suit as he moves to storm off into his own cottage, “that isn’t what I meant! Would you stop being so quick to jump to conclusions?! And be quieter, the others are sleeping, you know!”

“Well, it’s ‘cause _you_ —”

“You were being all suspicious for no reason again,” Kuzuryuu scolds him and Souda glares at him, mentally retracting his warm fuzzy feelings from earlier and vague sense of admiration. Who would admire this guy! Not him, that’s for damn sure! Except that flees too, as Kuzuryuu continues: “I didn’t say no. I was just surprised. Of course I was going to be surprised when you’re suddenly asking to come over!”

“It wasn’t like I was plannin’ on it, jus’…”

_Because you were nice to me all of a sudden. I just started thinking about stupid stuff like ‘I don’t want to be by myself’ and…_

“Come on, already.”

Souda squawks as Kuzuryuu fists the back of his clothes in a hand and starts to _drag_ him along. He’s stumbling and spluttering and making _sounds_ of protest before Kuzuryuu tells him to _shut the fuck up and get inside_ and he finds himself staggering inside Kuzuryuu’s cottage, the door clicking shut behind them as Kuzuryuu walks in after him.

“Oi!”

“You wanted to spend the night, right?”

Kuzuryuu breezes past him toward his bed, one of his hands loosening the tie at his throat, and Souda flushes.

“…now you’re the one jumpin’ to conclusions.”

Kuzuryuu gives him a _look_ and Souda fidgets. But he joins him, sitting hesitantly at the edge of Kuzuryuu’s bed as Kuzuryuu bustles about, removing his suit jacket and also fetching a couple of glasses down from a cupboard. “Here. You weren’t planning to drink out of the bottle, were you?” His expression says _that’s no good_.

They lapse into quiet then, Kuzuryuu munching on his snacks as Souda pours himself up a glass of cola… and even deciding to give Kuzuryuu up one. Out of the deep goodness of his heart, naturally. They sit together on the edge of his bed, drinking cola and snacking on karinto, and gradually… slowly but surely… the sound of the waves reach Souda’s ears, and the taste of cola and karinto seems to linger in his mouth, not unpleasant and sticky, but reassuring. His head tips a little forward, his shoulders slumping gradually as the strength leaves him.

He feels something at his head, realises sleepily that his hat is being removed and Kuzuryuu, clucking his tongue, is taking his empty cup from him and setting it aside. Presumably with his hat.

“…hey, lay down if you’re going to fall asleep on me. Come on, Souda.”

_Oh, hey, he said my name._

He yields to the pushing and the fussing, flopping back bonelessly on Kuzuryuu’s bed, his head finding a pillow to nestle down into.

“I’m not even going to try to get off the rest of your clothes… so don’t go complaining to me when you wake up and they’re a mess.”

Something nudges against him again.

“Move over, stupid. Stop hogging the bed.”

“Shaddup,” Souda grumbles but he rolls to make room, until his back is against the wall. Kuzuryuu settles onto the bed beside him, a sigh leaving him, and Souda (behind closed eyelids) can picture his posture, hands folded behind his neck, his chin tipped up and eye on the ceiling. Is he wearing his eyepatch? Does he cover up that eye even when he’s sleeping?

Curiosity overwhelms him… but so does exhaustion.

Despite wanting to know, sleep pulls him in, to the sound of Kuzuryuu’s breathing (and the feeling of what he thinks is a hand that ruffles his hair) and the waves of the ocean.


End file.
